


Before and After

by still_lycoris



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 12:33:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5540099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven doesn't remember very much before meeting Charles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before and After

She only remembered snatches of what came before.

Hunger, she remembered that. Hunger and despair and misery. Not much cold though, not really. Her freakish skin protected her from that, at least. Nothing else but at least she didn’t have to freeze.

Anger. She remembered anger and fear and distrust and hate. No people though. She must have had parents once but she doesn’t remember them. Everyone just blurred together into terrifying monsters that wanted to hurt her. The occasional flash of someone who was fooled by her disguises … but they all became monsters in the end when they saw what she was.

Until Charles.

Until the day she dies, she’ll never forget that extended hand, the gleeful smile on his face as he spoke to her. The first person who wasn’t scared because she was a monster. Who didn’t even seem to _mind_ her being a monster.

“You’ll be safe here, I promise.”

She’d almost eaten herself sick that first night, shoving food gleefully into her mouth. Charles had cooked for her; sausages and toast and eggs that she’d inhaled so fast that they’d nearly burned her mouth. She kept waiting for the punchline, the change of mind, the twist in the tale. She wanted to have eaten as much as she could before that happened, before she was banished again.

Except it didn’t happen. Charles eventually stopped her, laughing, told her there’d be more food tomorrow and she should come and sleep before anybody else woke up.

“You can sleep in my bed tonight, if you want. There’s space for us both, if you’re okay with that.”

Okay with it? A warm, soft bed? She’d have slept on the sofa, slept on the _floor_ but Charles just told her not to be silly. He found her an extra pillow, an extra blanket. They slept back-to-back, warm, comfortable and she found she felt almost safe.

It was still scary, at first. It might not last, it might fall apart. Charles had to implement the idea in people’s minds that she was there and had always been there. Charles told her he’d done this before but never quite on this scale. If it didn’t work, she supposed that she’d be on her own again. Out in the world, hungry and lost.

She hid stashes of food around the place. Just in case she had to leave in a hurry. She’d be able to get something, not be without.

Charles couldn’t understand that when he found one.

“But you can just go to the kitchen. Why do you need to hide things somewhere else?”

She didn’t know how to explain it to him. She was too young, he was too … himself. He had never been hungry for anything except affection. He didn’t know what it was to starve, to have your stomach hurt for food. He didn’t know what it was to feel insecure like that and she didn’t have the words for it.

So she just shrugged her shoulders at him and whispered that she was scared and that was the first time that he hugged her, his arms warm and gentle and loving.

“You don’t need to be scared. I’m going to take care of you. Always.”

She’d nodded as though she’d believed him absolutely but she hadn’t, of course. How could she? How could she really accept that anybody could take care of her? Nobody ever had before.

But as time passed and Charles was still there and the food was still there, she slowly began to believe it. That whatever happened, Charles would not let her down.

He couldn’t, of course. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely his fault. Nobody in the world could ever fulfil every single promise and not such big ones. But even when she was angry with him, she knew she would never forgot that extended hand that had so changed her world.

No matter what happened to her now, she was ready for it. And she was no longer afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the hc_bingo prompt "hunger" and 12dayschristmas


End file.
